*sigh*

You know, I wanted to like this series. Even here at the last issue, after months of snark, I wouldn’t have minded being proven wrong.

But let’s get on with it, shall we? It’s the end of our long trip to nowhere, and it’s been a string of superficially cool moments held together by a plot that’s just passable so long as you don’t stop and look too closely at it.

As mentioned above the cut, this was a mess of a plot. The Unity process was possibly the most sloppily-conceived mind-control device I have ever seen. It doesn’t work on half of the team…because it doesn’t, that’s why. (And yes, I can come up with a handful of reasons why it might not have worked, but this series did not so enchant me that I’m willing to the do the writers’ work for them.) Oh, look…the ego-maniacal madman calling himself The Master of the World backstabs his supposed allies and tries to take over the world…gosh, didn’t see that coming. Yeesh. Competence porn, this ain’t.

Anything good I might have had to say about Mac’s portrayal in this series was erased by those last few pages (it’s OK, it was a very short list anyway). You have two speedsters and you can’t yell at either of them to go catch your fanatic, brainwashed, muderous wife? (Not to mention that she’s got your kid with her, dumbass! Weren’t you just working to keep her safe from people like her mom?) Hey, in case you weren’t paying attention, she blew the heads off of family members for getting between her and her daughter. What do you think is going to happen to the next person she goes mama bear on? No, no…that’s OK. You just sit here and angst in front of your flag; I’m sure some actual heroes will be by any minute to clean up your mess.

Mac was never one of my favorite Flight members before, but now I actively dislike him, so good job there, guys! You managed to pull a Cyclops!

And yes, we can add this to the list of solutions that Marvel considers to be a better way to end marriages than divorce.

As for Heather herself…this was quite possibly the gravest disservice the writers could have done her character. They stripped her of a leadership position she’d earned and turned her into a murderer. Why? So a substantially less interesting character can wallow in manpain. Worse, they give her no chance to be accountable for her actions — a mother might elect to give up everything for her daughter, sure, but, since she left still under the influence of the Unity conditioning, Pak and Van Lent didn’t so much as grant Heather the grace of making a considered choice when it came to facing up to the ultimate consequences of her actions. They didn’t even give her the chance to take the hero’s path. And then, on top of everything else, they leave the storyline dangling. Whether this ending is what they originally intended to do all along or a case of them hanging themselves by trying to make changes after there was news of an ongoing, it’s still a shitty thing to do to a character who deserved far better and to the fans who supported Alpha Flight all these years.

(This is, BTW, the reaction that goes with the generous interpretation of how Heather’s character was handled. For the less generous one, the reaction is much simpler: I don’t know what books you’ve been reading, but they weren’t Alpha Flight and they didn’t have Heather Hudson in them. Perhaps you should try again when you’ve taken the time to do your fucking research and come up with a plot that’s a bit less vile and offensive to anyone with a uterus.)

As for other issues, the problems this team had writing for a relatively large cast (eight heroes plus scads of guest stars) are pretty blatant, and we wound up with some villains getting more attention than the heroes.

So far as character development goes, Snowbird had no reason to be in this story.

Wolverine had no reason to be in this story except that people expect to see Wolverine in an Alpha Flight book.

Puck’s past as an adventurer and recent stint as a war-leader in Hell could have meant he had several reasons to be in this book, but since indulging in FVL’s walk down memory lane was more important than giving actual AF cast spotlight, that didn’t happen.

Shaman…well, no real development as such, but he gets a pass for plot-device reasons.

Of course, then we look at the characters who did get their fair share of attention and wonder if those in the background might not have been the lucky ones.

Ah, Marrina. Everyone knows that readers don’t like sweet, kick-ass characters (Molly Hayes? Squirrel Girl? Who are they?), so you had to become the bratty teen sidekick. (I’m just going to chalk the emo “nobody loves me!” nonsense up to the Unity scientists being the most useless pack of idiots ever hired by Department H, because that makes more flipping sense!) Now, Marrina has been through a lot, let’s not discount that, and she was arguably the member of 80’s Alpha Flight in the most dire need of a touch-up. What we have here is an idea that might have been just fine if only the creative team had been at all interested in showing their work — some serious hint of how a character goes from point A to point B instead of just plunking us at point B with a throw-away line and insisting it’s super-cool awesome! As it stands, she just reads as a retread of the belligerent outsider concept that was done far better when Ellis was writing Machine Man (or when Byrne was writing Northstar for that matter).

There is a small part of me that wants to give the writing team backpats for going back to the idea that Jeanne-Marie will give her all for her brother when it really matters, but it’s just wrapped up in too many layers of ableist bullshit — people are not just magically cured of DID because they’re put in a crunch situation! YOU DO NOT GET OVER A GODDAMN MENTAL DISORDER JUST BECAUSE YOU REALLY FUCKING WANT TO! And no, there was no good fucking reason to retcon childhood sexual abuse into Aurora’s past except as a shortcut for angst. This is offensively lazy writing, start, middle, and finish and I sincerely hope FVL never gets his hands on Aurora again because he seems to have absolutely no clue of how to handle any of her issues with even the smallest grain of awareness.

(Also? Canonically, Jeanne-Marie and Aurora both give JP shit about his sexuality, so if you merge them, it makes no sense that the resulting personality is all for curing Kyle. Vinegar + Vinegar =/= honey.)

Sasquatch has nothing going for him here. He’s downgraded to being the poor man’s Hulk in the hackneyed “Alpha Flight are the Canadian Avengers” joke. I could even make an argument that his appearances here have actually been character regression after the events of Omega Flight, as the writers decide to again fumble the play by making him the team creepster. We’re supposed to like these guys, remember? It usually takes a little more than punches and quips to accomplish that when the character in question is a complete ass (but I suppose that’s the kind of oversight to be expected when the writers seem to think sexual harassment is funny).

Also, going for the creepy pedo factor with Master of the World? Lazy. Goddamn. Writing. He’s blowing up bits of Canada, brainwashing folks, and trying to do in our heroes. I think we get that he’s evil without throwing in “BTW, I’m planning to groom that innocent five-year-old into something worth fucking someday.”

Believe it or not, I have few complaints about how Northstar was handled in this story. I think they missed out by not taking advantage of the similarities between Kyle’s Unity treatment and Jean-Paul’s recent spate of brainwashings, and I would point out that treating a gay male love interest as a damsel in distress is pretty much the opposite of progressive (see also: Midnighter and Apollo), but fuck it — end of the day, they still get points for having the guts to make a same-sex relationship the romantic focus of the story, and all without chickening out on the PDAs (ahem, Heinberg!).

It’s not nearly enough to balance out the book’s weaknesses, though.

From the perspective of a fan who’s read every single Flight appearance she could get her hands on, this comic was less a trip down memory lane and more a pointless rehash of old Alpha Flight tropes and trivia, with almost no emotional resonance, adding little to nothing of value to the characters, and doing damage to those characters that the creators were not in a position to right.

Stepping outside of my affection for the team and taking this from the POV of a casual reader, it’s even worse. Without prior attachment, I’m given little reason to care about anyone in this book — for the most part, they come across as generic or confusing, no few of them are actively unlikable, and the plot is really nothing to write home about from either side of the fence. It’s no wonder this book is selling less than Generation Hope.

The worst thing about this is, I don’t for a second doubt that this creative team is really fond of Alpha Flight. They love these characters, and they’re obviously trying very hard to convince the readers to love them too. And that’s why it’s such a damn disappointment that, in spite of a pretty strong start, some promising ideas and a couple of very good moments slipped in amidst the fail (see issue #6 for the Master of the World’s backstory), nearly everything about this story feels like it’s either surface or poorly thought out.

Attention to detail is more than just guest spots and trivia meant to appeal to the nostalgia of long-time fans — that’s not inclusive detail, it’s standing around, grinning with the rest of the old guard and going “I read that too, wasn’t it great?” The details that matter, the ones that make the readers care, come with remembering what made these characters stand out in a sea of capes and masks for you, distilling that down, and presenting it to those who have yet to be convinced as an argument as to why your favorites should get a chunk of the audience’s time and emotions (and money, of course).

Instead, the sense I got from this series was that the writers believed that Alpha Flight’s awesome qualities were self-evident, that the investment was already there, and what they really needed to get people interested in the team were higher stakes and more action, thus the event tie-in, enough explosions and demolitions to make Michael Bay blush, Shaman punching people being treated as something worthy of comment, the ubiquitous fight with Wolverine, and Marrina, future internet meme hopeful, instead of characters I had reason to root for acting in ways that are both in character and make sense.

After this particular disappointment, I could stand for Alpha Flight as a team to go on ice for another five years or so, just so no one feels like this is what they have to build upon for the next incarnation. Now, don’t take that the wrong way — if Mantlo, Raab, Lobdell and Chuck fuck-mothering Austen couldn’t turn me away from Alpha Flight, there’s no chance in hell of this thing succeeding. At the same time, though, one good dose of “be careful what you wish for” does have a way of cooling down the fannish eagerness, and after eight months of ever-lowering expectations, I’m ready for a break.

…or at least Astonishing X-Men.